Whatever is...

Whatever is true,
whatever is noble,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable--
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--
think about such things.
~Philippians 4:8 (NIV)

I just received a beautiful Christmas card with this verse and thought it was so perfect... so many blessings of the season!

Have a great day...

Thanksgiving Weekend... FUN!

What a wonderful Thanksgiving we had... We were blessed with delicious food and great time with family and friends! It was especially fun for Steve and me to spend our first Thanksgiving together. After everyone left, we put the tree up on Thursday evening and finished decorating it on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, we worked outside and got the porch garland and wreath put up. It was so much fun working on it together. Today, we went to church and then I did a little more shopping. When I got home, I made us dinner and then made a batch of strawberry bread. It was SOOOO yummy. :)

I have a day of vacation tomorrow, so am planning on finishing up my Christmas cards and getting them in the mail before starting my workweek. Whew! What a fun few days... This is the beauty of life. Enjoying every moment!! I feel so blessed! :)

Thanksgiving and Christmas Prep...

Fun times are continuing in our world! Steve and I spent Saturday having such a good time. We both downloaded a program for our iPhones called "Lose It!" and we have spent quite a bit of time starting the process of tracking our calories and nutrition information on the food we are eating. It's an awesome little program and we have had some eye-opening revelations related to the amount of calories in the foods we have been eating. I think this is truly going to be a healthy move for us to really be aware of what we are eating and how we are exercising!!!!


After a quick healthy bite of lunch, we proceeded to the grocery store to start shopping for Thanksgiving goodies. As soon as we got home, we got busy cooking and made Graham Cracker Praline Squares, then Cherry Coconut Cheeseballs, then Butterscotch Haystacks and finally Peanut Patties and Fresh Apple Cookies. The house smelled wonderful!! I'm mailing a bit of everything to Dad tomorrow so he can have a little taste of home even though he won't be with us for Thanksgiving.


We topped it all off with a delicious Lasagna and fruit salad dinner (within our calorie count for the day) and started working on a Christmas project. We are making the garland that will go around the front door entrance to my house. It's looking so pretty.


This morning was church at Cottonwood Creek, taking care of Julie's kitties while she is out of town, then a little more cooking with my guy. Another awesome weekend. :)

P.S. Steve took the day off on Friday and went bow hunting with his buddy, Louie. They didn't get anything, but I think they had a good time. Here is a pic of "my hunter." :)

Have you ever heard of a Petaflop??

I read a new term today and just had to Google it... Peta-Flop

Weird name, huh?

Well it is "a measure of a computer's processing speed and can be expressed as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second."

Now I totally understand...

I was so inspired by Dr. Jack Graham's devotional this morning, I wanted to share it and remember it...

"Obedience is difficult sometimes, isn’t it? Though Christians are called to live a life characterized by joy, a fruit of the Spirit, our circumstances have a way of determining the amount of joy that is shining through us.

Yet in my life, I’ve learned that being thankful to God should never be dependent on my circumstances.

Now, the world is going to tell you that your joy should be determined by your circumstances… that if you’ve had a bad day, it’s okay to mope around and feel sorry for yourself. But God calls you to a higher standard.

One of the shortest verses in the Bible says, “Rejoice always.” So you and I are prohibited from allowing our daily circumstances to have so much control over us that they steal our joy.

Instead, find your joy in the Lord. He loves you so much that he sent Jesus to die so you could be rescued from the kingdom of darkness. This doesn’t just translate into eternal life. It also means you have the power of God in you today. What a wonderful thing to be joyful about!

So when the bank account is low and you’re behind on your bills, when you feel alone, or when you’ve had a rough day, rejoice because you are loved.

FIND YOUR JOY IN GOD’S BLESSINGS, NOT YOUR IMMEDIATE CIRCUMSTANCES."

Tyler Rose Festival

Saturday was the 77th Annual Tyler Rose Festival. We left really early on Saturday morning and headed to Tyler to enjoy the show. Neither of us had any idea what to expect and when we arrived, we realized that our tickets only had the label for the place that sold the tickets... NOT the location of the event. So... we stopped at McDonald's to ask the local patrons if they knew where we were supposed to go. No luck. On our way around the corner, we saw a police officer (who looked like he was actually just about ready to take care of some likely petty crime) and we pulled over to ask him where we should go. Fortunately, he pointed us in the right direction...

Traffic was moving very slowly, so we found an empty church parking lot to park the car and then started walking with a few other folks who appeared to be heading toward the event. We arrived at the stadium just in time to watch the parade. It was kind of fun to see the small-town pride and the LONG tradition that the parade and festival brought to the community.

Below are some of the gorgeous roses and flowers that we saw after the parade. It was amazing to see the number of gorgeous roses in bloom over several acres. What a fun day!

10-10-10

Once in a lifetime... 10-10-10. We had such a fun time on this unique day. We decided to go to early church and wound up being an HOUR early (thanks to my great memory!) I had just looked it up the day before and determined that Cottonwood Creek's early service is at 9:00 a.m. Well, as the evening was ending on Saturday night, I somehow got my wires crossed and I suggested that Steve come over at 7:30 a.m., which would give us plenty of time to get to church by 8 a.m. (I don't know how my brain shifted gears from 9 to 8 a.m.) UGH... So, we rolled into the parking lot about 10 minutes 'til 8 and there were hardly any cars there. No sooner had the words come out of my mouth about "how they can justify having an 8 a.m. service for this few people...?" when we saw the sign that "reminded" us that the first church service was at 9. So... we turned around and went to get our fair tickets and bus passes at Kroger's. It wound up all working fine, and we got a good laugh at my FANTASTIC memory! :)

We then went to the Parker Road station and road the DART light rail on a direct route to the fair. It was a gorgeous day and we had fun walking around UNTIL... we made a crucial error in judgment. We decided that the line to Fletcher's Corny Dogs was too long and we stood in a much shorter line to get a variety of fried foods. We tried fried peaches and cream and a fried grilled cheese sandwich. Both tasted good, but they were TOOOOO rich. Then, on top of that, we had a funnel cake and a small slider. Well, I should have known better and I paid the price. I got really icky sick and we had to leave before we were ready. Oh, well, it was an "experience" and a good lesson to stick with the tried and true.

Oh, Fletcher's... I missed you and I'll be back next time.

Hope everyone has a great week!

:)